ABSTRACT
Ecologically, primeval people differed from other mammals by only one very important skill — use of fire — which sometimes had remarkable impact on the local landscape. Improvement of paleolithic technology led to development of tools that increased work efficiency and increased human options to change landscapes. The impacts of agriculture on landscape features are connected with shielding crops against detrimental factors on the one hand and with the environmental consequences of applied technologies on the other hand. Conversion of forests or grasslands into cultivated fields changed, of course, the structure of landscape as well as endangered the existence of some plant and animal species. Efficient higher control of environmental threats from agriculture could be achieved by structuring agricultural landscape with various nonproductive components such as hedges, shelterbelts, stretches of meadows, riparian vegetation, and small ponds. The majority of landscape studies deal with the description or modeling of patterns of change in land-use forms due to human actions.
